Lots of chatter around the web in the past couple of weeks regarding the new internet radio royalty rate hike. The Wall Street Journal profiled our very own WOXY with an article today, I’ll link to the article here and provide some interesting quotes as well.

“The annual cost of running WOXY could more than double to around $2 million, far exceeding the station’s $500,000 to $1 million in annual revenue. The board’s decision could still be appealed or rescinded by Congress, but WOXY manager Bryan Jay Miller says, “I don’t see the situation getting any better.”

Interesting to see it in black and white, the numbers are not to be taken lightly….

“Mr. Nguyen doesn’t yet have a solution for WOXY, which currently has about 100,000 unique listeners monthly. He says he may restrict the ability to create songlists to users who are actually buying and selling CDs on Lala. He is also considering altering his CD-selling model so that listeners would use their own CD collections to stream music to each other online, rather than tapping WOXY’s collection, thus reducing his royalty fees. He also plans to work with other Web radio stations to appeal the royalty decision. “If the Copyright Board does this, they’re going to kill off a lot of Internet radio,” he says.”

“Sue Busch, head of radio promotions at Seattle’s Sub Pop Records, says most radio executives she knows rarely play new, independent music, relying on business consultants to tell them which songs are likely to be most popular. The WOXY DJs, she says, play songs they enjoy themselves.”

Awesome.

“There aren’t too many radio people who will just chit-chat about music they like,” she says. “We’re pretty big on taking care of people who have taken care of us.”

“I has listening the WOXY everyday,” a fan emailed from Brazil.

I love our South American listeners…..

The full Wall Street Journal Article.

Technorati Tags: Wall Street Journal, Sub Pop Records, WOXY